


adjustment phase

by ivorygates, synecdochic



Series: the cammieverse [4]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Imported, Rule 63, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-28
Updated: 2008-10-28
Packaged: 2018-05-30 17:09:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6433045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates, https://archiveofourown.org/users/synecdochic/pseuds/synecdochic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Whatever it is that's bothering her, it must be bad, because she drops every inch of the affability she usually carries and flat-out</em> snaps <em>at him. "Dr. Jackson, I do not have time to explain to you all the reasons why that's not going to happen, all right?"</em></p><p>Or: Cammie and Daniel work through a few differences in command style.</p>
            </blockquote>





	adjustment phase

**Author's Note:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/273663.html) 2008-10-28.)
> 
> Set about six months after Cammie takes over SG-1, and about three and a half months after Invitations. As was the case for a lot of these, it happened in AIM with ivorygates first, and then I took it and turned it into a story.

One of the nicest things about having Cammie for their team leader, Daniel has come to believe, is that when he (or Sam) says they should be doing something one way and Cammie had been planning on another, it's usually pretty easy to convince her that the other way is just as good. Which is why he nearly chokes when she looks straight past him, not even seeming to stop to consider, and says, "Absolutely not."

It's taken them _weeks_ to arrange this meeting with one of the splinter cells of the Lucian Alliance, halfway across the galaxy on a station that was Heru'ur's territory once upon a time and is now in more-or-less neutral hands. The culmination of weeks of careful planning, negotiation and propitiation and delicate, grenade-pin diplomacy, edging and circling around each other, and Daniel's been sacrificing sleep for longer than he cares to _think_ about. But he got them here, and the Lucians seem willing to deal, to sit down at the table and actually _talk_ to them, negotiate a peace treaty that might have a chance of lasting more than ten minutes, and now at the first break in the action, Daniel's suggested following the servant to the quarters the Lucians have offered to provide for them to rest in and Cammie hadn't even seemed to think about it before she'd said no.

He chokes back the flash of frustration -- doesn't she know how important it is to show their willingness to deal? -- and tries, as mildly as possible, "But Cammie --"

Cammie whips her head around and pins him with the sharpest glare he's ever seen from him, tight and taut. "I said _no_ , Daniel," she says.

"Look," he says. "I just want to --"

Whatever it is that's bothering her, it must be bad, because she drops every inch of the affability she usually carries and flat-out _snaps_ at him. "Dr. Jackson, I do _not have time_ to explain to you all the reasons why that's not going to happen, all right?" She looks past him again, her eyes falling on Sam. "Sam, you didn't leave anything you can't live without, did you?" Sam shakes her head, looking just as confused as Daniel feels, and Cammie's face hardens a little more. "Good. Then we're leaving. _Right_ now."

Daniel's left to stammer some kind of explanation to their escort, which is made far more difficult by the fact that he doesn't know _what the hell Cammie is up to_ , and the best he can come up with on such short notice is a religious taboo and he _hates_ having to fall back on that one. He puts a little bit more hustle in his step, enough to break from his position as third in line down the corridor and fall in at Cammie's heels, about to protest again; if he can figure out what's on her mind, he might be able to salvage this, not watch weeks of work go sinking down the drain on Cammie's whim. But she doesn't turn her head to look at him, just keeps striding down the hallway, and just as he's about to say _something_ , he notices that Cammie's not the only one who's acting strangely.

Teal'c looks nervous, and his eyes keep darting around them. Teal'c is never nervous unless there's cause for him to be.

Daniel shuts his mouth, and none of this makes any sense at _all_ , but Cammie gets them through the hallways of the station to the room where the Stargate is as fast as she can, and when they get there, she looks at Sam to dial, not Daniel. "Alpha site," she says, which is contrary to every single set of protocols on the books, and Sam's face flashes _startled_ for half an instant.

"Cammie --" Daniel tries again, trying to inject as much sweet reason into his voice as he can, and Cammie whips her head to stare at him. He actually has to stop himself from taking a step backwards at the anger that he can see in her eyes, even though her face is perfectly calm and neutral, and he closes his mouth fast before she has to say anything else.

Cammie turns her head back to Sam, her mouth opening to repeat her order, but Sam's already stepped up and started dialing. They walk through to the Alpha site in silence.

It takes a good ten minutes for them to deal with the SFs on guard at the Alpha Site; Cammie's the one to speak to them, though, and Daniel isn't close enough to hear what she's saying. She's the one who dials them back to Earth, and she's the one to send her GDO code. She gestures the three of them through without saying another word when the light turns green, and Daniel shuts up and goes. 

His boots sound too loud on the mesh of the Gate ramp, and Landry's staring at them from the control room. "You're back early, SG-1," Landry says, and _damn it_ , he'd spent a long damn time convincing Landry to let them go to these negotiations; this is going to take a while to clean up. "Dare I hope that things went well?"

Idiot; did he not _notice_ that the incoming wormhole came from the Alpha site? "Sorry, sir," Cammie calls up, sounding genuinely regretful, and Daniel blinks and looks over at her. Whatever it was that had been bothering her on the station seems to have melted away; she's looking a lot calmer now, giving Landry the same easy smile she always does. "No luck. We're going to have to go back to the drawing board."

Daniel opens his mouth again, not quite willing to let that go by -- they _had_ been making progress, dammit; he'd gotten three critical concessions out of their negotiator and had to give up much less than he'd been worrying they would -- but he shuts it again when he feels a sharp kick to his ankle. He looks over to find Sam staring at him. She shakes her head, just a tiny fraction, and Daniel gives her one of his most annoyed looks, and she shakes her head again. _Later_ , she mouths, tipping her head towards Cammie in the little way that's probably trying to indicate that it isn't a good idea to push Cammie's temper at the moment, and Daniel frowns, because he's suddenly wondering if he's missed something.

"Well," Landry says, sounding put-upon even through the intercom, "you can tell me in half an hour at debriefing. Go check in your gear."

The intercom clicks off. "You heard the man," Cammie says, and she sounds far too calm. Then her gaze lights on Daniel, and Daniel almost takes a step backwards again, because her eyes are solid and implacable. "And if you've got some time, Dr. Jackson, I'd take it kindly if I could borrow a few minutes of it."

It makes his temper flare up again, because she sounds cold and tight and not at all like _Cammie_ , like she's angry at him, like he's done something wrong. But he only nods, his chin jerking up, and she answers nod with nod. "Teal'c, take our gear," she says, sliding her pack off her shoulders and unbuckling her thigh holster. Daniel just stares at her for a second before doing the same, and Teal'c's face is unreadable as Cammie pivots on her heel to stride out of the Gateroom.

Her office isn't very far, and that's where she leads him; she shuts the door behind him as soon as he's cleared the threshold, which is something else that's out of the ordinary. Usually she keeps her door open, for anyone who might want to drop by, and a lot of people do. She has her arms folded across her chest as she turns to face him, and when she speaks, her voice is utterly devoid of any of the Southern drawl it usually contains. "I don't expect you to notice when the Lucians have a sniper hidden behind the false wall when they're sitting at the negotiating table with us," she says, and Daniel can feel his blood suddenly running cold, because no. He hadn't noticed. At all. "I don't expect you to notice when the servant they've sent to escort us to the resting lounge is carrying concealed. I don't expect you to notice when the man we're talking with has signaled that servant, and I don't expect you to notice when we're being led in a different direction than the one we should be led in, given where they've said they're taking us. It's my job to notice all of that. I do expect you to let me _do_ that job, and I do expect that when I say no, you take it on faith that I have a reason for that 'no' and give me the credit of not pushing for an explanation that I can't give right then and there. And I expect that a situation like this will never happen again."

Her voice is calm, no anger anymore, just a firm and unyielding _command_ , and all Daniel can do is _gape_ at her for a minute. Because on one level, she's absolutely correct; noticing those things _isn't_ his job, and never has been. On another level, not noticing those things is a quick way to get himself killed. And maybe everyone _else_ killed, too. He's appalled that he missed it. He shouldn't have. 

It leaves him furious at himself, and just a little bit at her for pointing out his fuckup, which is probably why he sounds so irate when he says, "Sorry. But if you need someone to take your decisions on faith, I guess you'd better get yourself a different cultural specialist. I'm sorry I screwed up. But I'm not too big on faith."

Cammie stares at him for a minute, and he's just beginning to regret the snip in his voice when she sighs and rubs a hand over her face. "I'm tempted to let that slide," she says, and she suddenly sounds _defeated_ , and that's just wrong. She crosses the room to sit on the edge of her desk, her hands underneath her thighs as she does so, and she's tall but not tall enough; her legs swing freely as she studies him, her teeth set in her bottom lip, and for a second she looks like a little girl. Then he blinks again and she's back to being the calm leader. "Because I do need you. And you know I need you. And even _if_ that's what lets you give me lip like that and think there won't be any fallout from it, well, it's also what means that there likely _won't_ be. Because you know as well as I do that I'm not kicking you off the team."

A rush of relief, followed by another surge of anger -- how dare she talk to him like that -- but she's still speaking. "But if I let that go, you're going to go on thinking you're in the right here. And I am sorry, Daniel, but you're not. I value you highly, I respect you immensely, and I wouldn't have anywhere near as easy a time of things without you as I do with you -- but if you don't believe by now that I don't just make decisions in the field for the sake of hearing myself talk, if you don't believe by now that I'm not going to be whimsical or capricious, then we're not on the same page here. We're not even in the same zip code. And that's going to get someone killed."

And it's the echo of a thousand arguments he's had before -- _shut up and do what I tell you to do, Daniel; you aren't listening to a word I'm saying, Jack_ \-- and it makes him laugh, harsh and biting, because he'd thought he was done with those arguments. He'd _like_ to be done with those arguments. Sometimes he thinks that his entire adult life has been punctuated by arguing about whether or not he's going to do what he's told, about whether or not he's going to knuckle under and follow the party line. Sometimes he feels like he's been compromising his principles for the sake of expediency for as long as he can remember. It makes him angrier than he wants to admit that Cammie has become the latest person in a long line of faces expecting him to be something that he isn't and never wanted to be.

"Nobody's irreplaceable," he says. "And before you say anything, I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about me. You can do without me. If you can't, you've got an even bigger problem than you say I'm being." His mouth twists, and he can _hear_ the bitterness in his voice, but he can't stop himself and he doesn't really want to. "This isn't about 'whimsy' and it isn't about 'caprice'. It's about the same thing it's always been about. Military agenda versus civilian agenda. It's never going to go away. And the really _fun_ thing about all this is that there aren't even just two sides anymore. Now it's military and civilians and government bureaucrats, and you know? I have _absolutely no idea_ what side I'm on from day to day anymore. Aside from the fact that all three of them are _completely wrong_ at various times. I'm pretty clear on _that_."

His voice is rising, and he _knows_ he's yelling, and she's giving him that look like she'll sit there and wait for him to shout himself out if she has to, and that just pisses him off even more. "But _you_ don't get to make that choice, do you, Cammie?" he says, and he can hear it coming out vicious and pointed, because suddenly he wants her to be just as angry as he is. "Or should I say 'Colonel Mitchell, ma'am'? Because I'm never going to be able to salute you and jump when you say frog, but you've got a hell of a lot more practice at following orders than I ever will. And that's not placing blame, by the way. That's stating facts. So maybe that makes you right and me wrong. Or maybe the other way around. Or maybe we should just call it a day and admit that you'd be happier working with someone who speaks your language. I hear Atlantis is still hiring; I can take the next trip."

Daniel's expecting that to kick off another round of yelling, or worse, the scary cold _force_ she'd used back on the Lucian station, but all Cammie does is cock her head and study him. He knows it for her figuring-things-out look: eyes narrowed, face thoughtful, body still. "You should place blame," she says, calm and contemplative, and it takes half the wind out of his sails when he realizes that she's -- what? Giving him _permission_ to be angry with her? "Because if I'd been doing my job right, we wouldn't have gotten to the point of yelling. And if I'd been doing my job right, I would've realized that you've had ten years' worth of having had to push and shout and fuss to get listened to, and I would have had this conversation with you a hell of a lot sooner. And I'm sorry for that, and I mean it sincerely, and I hope you'll forgive me."

She's got him pinned with her eyes, and he opens his mouth to say something -- even though he's not sure what the hell he _would_ say -- but she's still talking. "So let's back up and start it now. I don't give a rat's ass about civilian or military or government bureaucrat, Daniel. I care about doing the right and honorable thing. And I think -- I hope -- that by now you know me well enough to be able to say what my standards of right and wrong are. I've got no problems spinning my orders until you don't have to do anything you think is wrong, and I've got no problems with putting my foot down and fussing until the orders we get given are the right orders. And when all else is equal, I've got no problems stepping back and letting you do what you think is right, because in the end, I trust your judgement and I trust your experience, and I _know_ you're better at this job than I could ever hope to be. That's why I wanted you. You provide a perspective that I _need_ to have, in order to make the right decisions."

She sounds so calm, so reasonable, that all he can do is gape at her, because -- does she have any _idea_ what she's saying? But her voice hardens back to that steel he'd heard before, and she keeps going without giving him a chance to get his conversational legs underneath him. "What I've got a problem with is you treating me like I've got a hand up my ass and the puppet strings are being held by a bunch of old men in dress blues. And I've got a real problem with you taking your issues with the program out with me. And I've got one fucking hell of a problem with you intimating like you're going to take your bat and ball and go home, or that I should kick you off the team if I don't like the way you're acting -- and I don't -- because I like to think that you and I both have the same goals, here, and this isn't the way to serve them. And I need you to make a decision, and I need you to make it soon: you need to either work past all the resentment you're still saving up and figure out what we can all do together if we're all on the same page, or you need to let me know that's never going to happen so I can figure out how to work around it. Because this thing is going to turn into a disaster pretty damn fast if you don't figure out whether or not you trust me."

And then the adamantine resolve is gone again, and she's back to just being calm. "I _am_ sorry for the yelling, back there," she says, and it's nearly clinical now. "And for putting you in a position where I had to."

Daniel just stares at her. He can't even tell what he's thinking, aside from _Jack never would have_ \-- but Cammie isn't Jack, and that's been clear for a while -- months -- but he hasn't quite let himself realize, has he? Jack never would have had this conversation with him, clear and frank and honest, and good Lord, she really _has_ identified every last subconscious resentment he's been cherishing for what feels like forever. It leaves him feeling dizzy. 

And he isn't sure whether to laugh at her for her utter naiveté at believing that she can set an independent course and tweak her orders until he doesn't have to do anything he thinks is wrong -- even Jack couldn't do that much ( _or wouldn't?_ whispers the voice of doubt in the back of his head) -- or to fall down at her feet and weep because she's willing to try. Because 'old men in dress blues' _do_ hold her strings (his strings, Sam's strings, the SGC's) and have for years: they can fire him, cashier her, do God-knows-what to Teal'c. None of them own themselves. They never have.

But one thing is suddenly, stunningly, clear. Cammie has been commanding SG-1 for six months now, and in that time, he's seen her with politicians and superior officers and alien dignitaries and everyone straight on down the line, and he's never seen so much of a hint of _this_ : this calm, collected, dignified woman who knows every inch of her power and is ready to use it. She presents herself as -- not a fluffhead, not _precisely_ , but Daniel knows that half the time, Landry's ready to pat her on the head and call her a good little girl, and Daniel, too, has been thinking of her as --

Harmless. That's a good enough word for it. Sweet and kind and generous, determined when she needs to be, ready to do whatever needs to be done, and sure, sudden death on two legs whenever someone threatens them on the other side of the Gate, but for crying out loud -- and that's Jack in his mental monologue, sure enough -- the woman bakes cookies for the entire base on a regular basis. She knits socks in the Monday morning department-heads meetings. He swears he's seen Senator McKinley of the Appropriations Committee pinch her cheek.

The woman looking at him, waiting for him to make his response, is as far from being harmless as you can get. And Daniel knows -- _knows_ \-- that woman has been there the entire time.

It feels like realizations are bursting in the back of his head, and through it all, one small voice, as clear as though it's whispering in his ear: _Every time Jack argued against his orders, it was enough to start World War III. Cammie won't even let it get to the point of an argument._

And: that's it, that's the piece he's been missing, why she spends so much time being so sweetly agreeable to everyone she meets. She makes them think she's reasonable. (Say what you will about Jack, a man for whom Daniel has the utmost respect; 'reasonable' has never been an adjective that suits him.) And the old men who pull their strings will listen to reason from a pretty woman who flatters and sweet-talks them, and they won't even realize they're doing exactly what she wants until it's all over but the shouting.

It's appalling. It's _medieval_. For the first time, Daniel can actually fully understand the perpetual argument Cammie and Sam are engaged in, because the thought of Cammie having to -- to _prostitute_ herself like that, to make them think that they're using her at the same time that she's -- ruthlessly -- using _them_ \-- makes his stomach do unpleasant backflips. 

But it's working. Thinking back, Daniel can't recall a single instance in the last few months of Landry not doing what Cammie wanted him to do.

And Daniel's been treating her the exact same way that everyone else has. And she's telling him now that it has to stop.

_Does_ he trust her? That's the question, and he hadn't expected her to put it so blatantly, because he's pretty sure that a team leader isn't supposed to ask her subordinates whether or not they trust her. But hasn't he spent so long establishing that he's _not_ in the military, that he's not going to shut his mouth and fall into line? She _has_ given him a ridiculous amount of leeway over the past six months. He's been noticing it, and he'd thought it was just inexperience. Or intimidation. He's noticed it before, when he's been placed on loan to other SG teams or had to go out in the field with someone other than Jack, over the years; he intimidates people, whether because he's smarter than they are or been through more than they have or just because he has the mysterious cachet of eight years as SG-1. 

He'd thought that was what it was with Cammie. Hero worship. That she'd begged and bullied and manipulated him and Sam and Teal'c into returning to SG-1 so she could be part of that legend. He'd gone along with it, because for all that he wants to see Atlantis, he'd been oddly nostalgic for his time on the front lines and left feeling a sense of responsibility (perpetual) for the state of the galaxy that he'd helped destablize so thoroughly. Staying on SG-1 will let him work to create something more stable, more lasting, to help fill the power vacuum left after the defeat of the Goa'uld. 

Staying on SG-1, Cammie has just told him -- in no uncertain terms -- will mean accepting her command. _Trusting_ her command. Because she's just told him that no, her desire to bring them all back together to work together again isn't due to hero worship. It's because she thinks he has something to offer, something nobody else can. And he's been saying that for years, but --

Is she right? _Has_ he been taking nearly a decade of frustration out on her? 

Has she been making a conscious effort to listen to him, to take his opinions into consideration and to let him do the research and negotiation and investigation he's always wanted to do and never had the time for, because she thinks it's the way things ought to be and not because she's trying to bribe him into being content enough to stay? He's been waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for her to get comfortable enough in her command that she'll stop being on her best behavior and start slipping into the way things are going to be long-term, so that he could decide whether or not he could be happy -- or at least content -- staying here. He's been holding out the thought of Atlantis as an escape hatch, one foot perpetually in another galaxy, ready to pack up and go the minute Cammie proves to be just like all the others, the minute it becomes plain that this isn't going to work out after all. Is that what's keeping this from working out?

"There's nothing to forgive," he says, slowly, his thoughts still in a tailspin. Because there isn't, not really. He was in the wrong; how many times did he and Jack have the fight about the safety of the team versus the secondary priorities of the mission? And if he was in the right, too -- which he _was_ , dammit; they _need_ that intelligence they were negotiating for, and that fact hasn't changed -- he thinks, somehow, that Cammie knows it. "I'd forgotten it's your job to keep us all safe. It won't happen again."

Cammie nods. "Apology accepted," she says, brisk and sure, though not at all dismissive. And if what he said wasn't -- precisely -- an apology, well, it was close enough. As close as he usually gets, at least. She doesn't smile at him, doesn't give him any of her usual soothing reassurance, but he thinks, looking at her, that it's because _this_ woman, the one he's standing in front of, doesn't need to play those little games. Like she's doing him the courtesy of showing him what she's really thinking, what she keeps behind the smiles she always wears, and he's going to have to go off for a while and think about this, because up until now, he's just been thinking of her as his team leader. The woman he's facing isn't anyone's 'team leader'. 

_Commanding officer_. And she's been working around the fact that Daniel hasn't consented to be under anyone's _command_ for as long as he can remember, but looking at her, really _seeing_ her, Daniel thinks: Teal'c has given her his allegiance. What does that tell him?

"Now," she says -- and it's just as brisk, but there _is_ (finally) a hint of her drawl creeping back into her voice, and it's amazing how much of a comfort it is for him to hear it. "Goin' back to what happened just now. I do know how important it is for us to find out where they're getting their naquaadah from, an' I really _am_ sorry I had to pull us on out of there before you could really get them talking to you. Why'n't you think a bit about the best way for us to get them back to the negotiating table -- somewhere _we_ control, this time." And now the smile's creeping in, just a faint little tip of her lips. "It's all right if you let them know that _we_ know they were just about to sell us up the river, if it'd help. And I'll go and handle General Landry so he doesn't jog your elbow while you work on it."

Daniel finds that he's smiling a little in response. "Planning to glue his office door shut?" he asks, and then purses his lips. "Our best choice would actually be a technically-neutral location. And ... I'll get back to you on the rest." He's got a few ideas. Nothing concrete. If he can just go look up whether or not --

He doesn't notice that he forgets to finish off the conversation as he turns and walks out of her office; he needs to go get the thought down before he loses it.

*

Cammie watches Daniel walk out of her office -- nearly bumps himself straight into the door when he tries to walk through it before he's finished turning the knob -- and tries to conceal a smile, because she's pretty sure he's forgotten she exists. Once he's gone, though, the smile fades away, and she rubs her temples and rotates her shoulders in her sockets and goes through every single one of her releasing-tension exercises, because just because that was a conversation she should have had weeks ago doesn't mean it's a conversation that was _fun_. Or pleasant. Or in any way something she wanted to go through right now, when she's still on edge from nearly having gotten them all _killed_ , and it's a good thing she loves the man as much as she does, because if she didn't, she'd just save herself a lot of headache and _shoot_ him.

She's still sitting on the edge of her desk, trying to think about the best way to handle Landry at the briefing, when Sam comes to the door; she peers inside and looks a little confused. "I wasn't quite sure which body I was going to have to hide," Sam says. "Did you just triple-zat him instead?"

Cammie puts the smile back on her face and makes herself laugh, because she knows full well Sam's trying -- trying _hard_ , even -- to hold herself to the deal they made between them, no matter what had been written down on paper at first. Landry and the Pentagon had mumbled something about joint command: Sam in charge of scientific missions, Cammie in charge of pure military, and it's nonsense and moonshine, because you can't separate things out like that. But it's all a complex dodge around the fact that Sam has years more experience in field work -- including a year as commander of SG-1 -- while Cammie has more time-in-grade (she got her silver leaves six months before Sam did; Sam had been delayed back at the start, working on her doctoral dissertation), but more of it was on the disabled list. 

Complex and muddy situation, and the compromise the boys in blue worked out could've been necessary if she and Sam hadn't been the two of them. But Sam had told Cammie, one night early on over margaritas and gossip in their PJs on Sam's living room couch, that the year she'd spent in the hot seat, back when General O'Neill had first been promoted, had been miserable for her. "I won't come back if I have to be in command in the field," Sam had said. "That's my one condition. I don't care what you have to do to swing it, but that's my condition." 

Took a little bit of doing in cadging Landry over to her side, but Cammie had gotten it all sewn up neat and tidy by the time her three-month anniversary had gone by, and right about now, she's starting to understand why Sam had wanted that settled up front.

"Wasn't that bad," Cammie says. "And don't think I didn't notice you shutting him up back in the Gate room back there. Thanks for that."

"I thought you were about to shoot him on the spot," Sam says, with a laugh. 

"Nearly did," Cammie says, and pushes herself off her desk, heading around the side of it to rummage in her desk drawers. She keeps a bottle of Aleve in there, no matter how much Taddy and Carolyn both grumble at her for dosing herself instead of coming down to the infirmary to make sure there isn't something more serious wrong with her, and right about now she can feel the headache threatening to settle in across the bridge of her nose and her temples. "Nearly slapped you, too, you know. You nearly made me repeat my order about where we were going."

Sam pulls a face. "I know," she says, and she doesn't sound happy with herself. "And I've been kicking myself about it ever since I realized what you had in mind. Hell, I was the one who _told_ you that there was a possibility the Lucians had figured out a way to man-in-the-middle our GDO transmissions." 

Cammie looks around her desk for a second, realizes that the inch of cold coffee in the mug on the corner of her desk is from yesterday and not this morning, and swallows the two pills dry. "You were also the one who told me that was a million-to-one chance," she says, dryly. "That wasn't why I had you divert us. I just didn't want to keep standing there with my shoulderblades itching for the thirty-second eternity to get the iris code transmitted." And dammit, she _should_ let this slide, but she's already had this merry-go-round with Daniel; why not go ahead and repeat it with Sam. "Point is, you nearly gave me backtalk, and I had no idea if you had any clue how much danger we were _in_."

Sam sighs. "I caught some of it," she says. "Teal'c just finished bitching me out -- well, for Teal'c, anyway -- for missing the rest. I _am_ sorry, Cammie. I didn't think. I only realized how stupid I was being after I saw you get all calm with Daniel."

She looks genuinely regretful, too, and like she knows now _exactly_ what she did and why it's worrying Cammie so badly. And Cammie knows that Sam knows the importance of chain-of-command, the way one person and one person alone can be in the hot seat at any given time -- hell, Sam was the one who first called the Pentagon's notion of shared command sheer idiocy -- but she can't help thinking that Sam -- like all of them, really -- has gotten used to naming her own tune for the fiddler to play. And Cammie's been letting it go on, because she's new, because she's _inexperienced_ , letting Sam and Daniel (and to an extent, Teal'c) drive when it doesn't make no nevermind, and it has to stop. 

Cammie rubs the bridge of her nose, feeling the tautness there, and promises herself an evening of nothing more than baking bread and lounging in the bathtub with a good book at the first available opportunity. "I slapped him down so hard I think he isn't gonna realize how hard he was slapped until a few days from now," she says. "I gotta do that with you, or can we just take the lecture as a given and move on from here? Better from here on out?"

Sam breathes out, like a release of worry she hadn't been aware of holding, and smiles. "I think we can take it as a given," she says. "And I promise I'll do better next time. Come on, let's go explain to General Landry all the ways in which this nearly turned into a disaster."

The debrief doesn't take long -- Landry is unsurprised at the Lucian treachery, so much so that it takes Cammie a hell of a lot of sweet-talk to work him around to not calling off the whole idea entirely. Daniel's there, which surprises Cammie, and he's quiet through it, answering direct questions only, which surprises her even more. He's watching her as she works Landry down, and he has the little frown-line in his forehead that means he's thinking about something (and something that _isn't_ the problem she gave him to chew on to keep him from fretting about all the things she'd been forced to hit him with), but he doesn't say anything of substance to her directly once Landry's dismissed them all, either. Just that he's working on the thing she asked him to work on, and he'll have some preliminary thoughts for her tomorrow, and she nods and says thank you and watches him head back on out.

Eventually it's just her and Teal'c left in the conference room, and she looks at Teal'c and he looks back at her and she says, "Hell."

"I believe that is an accurate assessment, Colonel Mitchell," Teal'c says, kind and sympathetic, and stands from his chair. "If I am not mistaken, your day is nearly concluded. Do you have plans for the early part of your evening, or may I invite you to join me for your repast?"

The thought of having dinner with Teal'c -- and more, the thought of having dinner with Teal'c _without_ either of her two problems tagging along -- is suddenly delightful; she stands up too. "I would be delighted to join you for dinner," she says, firmly. "In fact, grab a bag and c'mon home with me for the night. Couch still sucks, but it's all yours as long as you want it."

Teal'c knows full well the couch sucks -- he's crashed on it a few times here and there, and Cammie's _still_ trying to persuade him to try the moving-out-of-base thing again, and she isn't getting far -- but he's never seemed to mind. "I will meet you at the entrance in twenty minutes, then," he says, and she nods and pushes her own chair back from the table to go and tidy up the tail-end of her day.

Takes her twenty-eight minutes -- Nat Reynolds caught her on her way out of the changing room, wanted to make sure she was still on for Wednesday night's poker game, and she got caught up talking to him -- but Teal'c doesn't seem to mind the wait; they sign out and head on up to the parking lot in silence, and she likes him for a lot of reasons, but his ability to simply _be there_ with her is a big part of it. They're halfway down NORAD Road by the time she makes up her mind. "You mind if we just swing by Villa Pizza on the way and pick us up a couple of pies?" she asks. "I think I'm kinda too wiped to be doing any cooking tonight."

Teal'c just inclines his head. "I would not mind at all," he says, and holds out a hand. "If you will allow me to borrow your phone, I would be happy to place the order."

She fishes her cell phone out of the back pocket of her jeans and hands it over, listening to Teal'c's measured tones as he orders their pizza without having to ask her what she wants. (Two pies; green peppers and mushrooms on hers, the whole works on his, plus a full loaf of garlic bread and an antipasto salad for them to split.) It's nothing but a minute to swing by the restaurant to pick it up (and she actually _wins_ the battle of who's going to pay this time, which is nothing short of a miracle) and when they get the food and themselves into her apartment, she kicks off her shoes with a deep sigh and waves a hand at the table.

"Drop the pizza, and you know where everything is by now," she says, heading straight for her bedroom, and bless him if he doesn't just nod and head for the kitchen to dig out plates and napkins and forks (for the salad, not for the pizza; she and he are both of the opinion that pizza is made for eating with your hands). She also knows he's not going to begrudge her some unwinding time, so she takes the time for a hot shower -- water feels _damn_ good on her neck muscles, which are tensed up so badly she's pretty sure it's where her headache is coming from -- before she changes into scrub pants and a tank top and wanders back on out.

No matter _how_ many times she tells him that it's all right not to stand on ceremony, he _still_ insists on waiting for her to finish up her just-through-the-door routine before he'll start eating, so it's no surprise to find that he's got the antipasto salad parceled out onto two plates and is sitting with his hands folded and his food untouched. There's no sign of the pizza or the garlic bread. Sitting in the oven on warm, she knows, ready for them to finish the salad. She also notices that he's opened her a bottle of beer; it's sitting next to her plate, waiting for her. She picks it up as she's sliding into her chair and takes a deep swig. 

"Day like that, I might need two of these," she says, and Teal'c, with one quirked eyebrow, pushes the other bottle forward from where it had been hiding itself behind the vase of the flowers she likes to keep on the table as much as she can. "Oh, bless you," she sighs. "That was nearly a bad one."

"Indeed," Teal'c says, in perfect agreement, and that's really all they need to say until they've polished off the salad and the pizza and the garlic bread to boot. (She only eats half of hers, while he goes through his entire pie, but it's all right; he'll eat her cold pizza in the morning for breakfast.)

Eventually she finishes, with a happy sigh of more-or-less contentment -- Villa Pizza makes the only acceptable pizza in the whole Colorado Springs region, and their garlic bread almost hits the status of 'decent' -- and launches straight in, no preamble. "A'ight, I need you to give this to me straight," she says, and Teal'c looks back at her and gives her that of-course nod. "How bad am I fucking this up?"

And he looks at her, and she loves him a little bit more -- completely platonically, of course, the way it's been since moment one -- for the way that he doesn't rush to reassure her with platitudes. He just considers, the way he always considers, and thank fuck for the fact he's here, because if he weren't, she'd have been up on charges for _murder_ sometime well before now.

"You are not doing as badly as you feel you are," Teal'c finally says, slowly and thoughtfully. "You have made mistakes. But they are not serious ones, and you have demonstrated, multiple times, that you have the most important characteristics: the ability to listen and consider, acting out of necessity and not out of haste. I have seen many young commanders attempt to rule their command by fiat, not by example. You are not one of them."

Cammie blows out the breath she was holding and turns his words over in her head for a few minutes. "It don't _feel_ right," she says, finally, searching for the words she needs. "That dust-up with Daniel today -- that shouldn't have happened. I shouldn't have _let_ that happen. And Sam only didn't follow his lead because she knows me and she knew how close I was to blowing. The last thing I want is to have to step on them both and rein them in, because if I have to break them to heel it'll break SG-1. But I can't help thinking they both want to be anywhere but here."

And that _hurts_ , is what it does. Sam hasn't made any noises about requesting reassignment, but Cammie thinks that has more to do with whatever went down at Area 51 than any real desire to be back as part of SG-1, and Daniel drops hints about Atlantis once a day and twice on Sundays. All right, not _that_ often, but for too damn long it's been "oh, it's Thursday, Dr. Jackson must be trying to resign again", and it's coming up on the point where she's ready to just tell him to _go_ already if it's this miserable working on a team under her. The only reason she hasn't yet is because she can't tell if it's personal hurt or professional frustration that makes her want to, and _that_ kind of wondering doesn't make things any easier either. It's fucking hard being a grownup, dammit.

Another pause, some more consideration, and Teal'c finally says, "I would not be willing to remain if I did not believe you were an appropriate commander for SG-1. It will merely take Samantha Carter and Daniel Jackson some time to adjust to the change in leadership style. Your command is far different from O'Neill's, and while I do not believe they are unhappy with the difference, not at all, it will still require some -- 'getting used to'." After this long, she can hear the quote marks in his voice that are always there when he delves into more colloquial speech. "I do not believe you are doing poorly. It will simply take time."

Conventional wisdom says it's suicide for a commander to talk over her doubts with a member of her command, but conventional wisdom wasn't made for a situation where one of said command happens to have been a general of armies when her _Momma_ was still in diapers. She knows damn well Teal'c could do her job just as well as she can, if not better, all things being equal. She also knows he doesn't want to, and all things aren't equal. Nobody'd stand put for a Jaffa commander of SG-1. 

That doesn't mean she can't learn from him. And he's willing to talk things over with her any damn time she needs, which is the only reason she hasn't _run screaming_ yet.

So she settles herself back a little more firmly in her crappy kitchen chair, pulling her knees up to her chest and propping her chin against them. "I know you're right in my head," she says, slowly. "Taking a little while to convince my gut." She reaches out, snags the second of the two beer bottles, finishes off the last half-inch at the bottom, mostly foam. The beer isn't doing anything to her but making her a little warm, a little more loose-tongued. "Hand to God, I came this close to accepting Daniel's resignation from the team this afternoon when he dumped it on me again. And, you know, that ain't doin' me much good, either. Knowing that he's so willing to walk away whistling."

"He respects your ability," Teal'c says. "As do I. As does Colonel Carter. But Daniel Jackson is perpetually of the opinion that if he and another individual are having a conflict, it is his duty to remove himself from the conflict as the wisest form of resolution. He finds it the easier path to take."

"Because he doesn't want to face up to the fact that if he sticks, he has to _deal_ with things," Cammie says, heaving a sigh, and waves one careless hand when Teal'c opens his mouth to say something else, because she knows he won't stand for hearing her badmouth any of the others. Let off steam, yes; talk about problems, yes; make personal cracks, no. "No, no, don't say it, I know. It's just his thing. And I get it, I really do, which is why I've been trying so damn hard to give him the bit and let him chew on it. I really _don't_ mind working with what he thinks is necessary, most of the time. But if I keep a loose hand on the reins, we get things like today."

"Ah," Teal'c says, and, "Indeed." 

"Go on, I can hear you thinking it," Cammie says. Cranky and irritable, and that's not fair to Teal'c, who's just trying to _help_. She lifts a hand to rub at the muscle in her shoulder that's still tight and screaming at her, willing herself to relax. "Sorry. I'm just -- that kind of emotional blackmail makes me so damn _cranky_. That whole 'you don't want me, I'll just take my bat and ball and go home' temper tantrum. Hand to God, he's the galaxy's most well-educated _two-year-old_ sometimes."

The eyebrow goes up again, and she can feel herself flushing, because he doesn't even have to say it. "All right, all right, I _know_ I'm not much better sometimes," she mutters. 

"I would not presume to say such," Teal'c says, and Cammie has to snort, because like fuck he wouldn't. "Perhaps, however, you should view it from his point of view. He has spent years being told that his perspective, though necessary, is often inconvenient. Even O'Neill, for all their friendship, was known to intimate thus. Perhaps he simply wishes to spare you the inconvenience of integrating such a difficult perspective, instead wishing to provide you with someone with whom you could be more compatable."

Cammie purses her lips, trying to see it from Daniel's hypothetical point of view, and finally she makes a little frustrated noise and buries both her hands in her hair, pulling on fistfuls of it. (Overdue for a trim again; it's about ready to start getting in her eyes.) "Maybe I'll just go become a Buddhist nun," she mutters.

"SG-1 would no doubt suffer the lack of your wise counsel," Teal'c says, utterly blandly, and she looks up and gives him her very best _don't you think I don't notice that you're laughing at me, mister_ look. He looks back, all unruffled innocence. "Do not fret, Colonel Mitchell. You are learning. And I will have words with Daniel Jackson and Samantha Carter about their behavior in the field. O'Neill trained them to behave with more grace than they have been lately. I shall remind them of this fact." Before she can protest, he adds, "Without revealing the substance of the conversations you and I have had on the matter."

Cammie sighs. "Yeah, okay, probably a good idea. Thanks. And --" She hesitates, finally just blurts it out. "I need you to promise me something, all right?"

"You have but to ask," Teal'c says, "and I shall consider."

She rotates her shoulder again, thinking mournfully of hot baths and good massages and _downtime._ "If you see that I'm about to screw the pooch, I need you to promise me that you'll stop me before I can do something stupid, all right? Even if it's just something as little as handling Daniel or Sam wrong. I don't want this to turn into a royal clusterfuck."

Teal'c inclines his head, all solemn gravity, with his very best look of faithful-servant. It's what _he_ hides behind, just like she hides behind all her best southern belle sometimes. "I give you my word, Cameron Mitchell," he says, and it has the intonation and rhythm of a sacred vow. "I will not allow you to imperil yourself, or the lives or well-being of those under your command. You may rely upon me in that matter."

"Thanks," she says, knowing that he'll see how much it means to her, knowing how much she's relying on him as her safety net. Then she stands up, stretching and blowing out a huge sigh, and she gathers up her empty beer bottles to go drop them in the kitchen and swap them out for a refill. "Now. Pretty sure it's your turn to pick the movie, but I am _not_ watching Return of the Jedi again."

*

Daniel's up until the wee hours of the morning -- his natural habitat, really -- putting the finishing touches on the proposal Cammie asked him for, and when he finally hits the stage of paraphrasing the SGC's wiki articles on the cultural backgrounds of every world that the highers-up in the Lucian alliance come from -- from memory -- he finally has to admit to himself that he's procrastinating from thinking about what he _really_ needs to think about. 

He can still hear Cammie's voice echoing in his memory: _this thing is going to turn into a disaster really damn fast if you don't figure out whether or not you trust me_. Trust. It's a painful word. He's trusted Jack -- most of the time -- and gotten back both tremendous reward and tremendous heartbreak over the years. But he's always been painfully aware that Jack's first loyalty was always to his orders, and when those orders conflicted with what Daniel thought was right, Daniel would almost always come in second best. 

And there have been times that worked out and times that didn't, and there have been times when Daniel's managed to forget the conflict and times when all he wants to do is walk through the Gate and never come back, and the reason he'd put in for transfer to Atlantis in the first place had been that he didn't want to sit around and watch what the SGC would become without even the limited ability he'd had to talk Jack into doing the right thing. And part of why he'd stayed had been the opportunity to train Cameron Mitchell into looking at things from every angle, the opportunity to leave some small piece of himself behind in whatever the new SG-1 would become, in the hopes that the new legacy of the SGC wouldn't fall, unchecked, into the worst pieces of the old, and he'd found himself pleasantly surprised at how willing she was to listen. To learn from him. He'd thought, as time went on, that he'd give her a year, and see what kind of hands SG-1 would be left in, and make his decision then as to whether or not he'd stay. 

And now she's all but flat-out said -- _has_ flat-out said -- that she doesn't consider herself bound by her orders. Not the way Jack ever had, at least. Jack had pushed back against his orders when he saw the need to -- which was not always when _Daniel_ had seen the need to -- but somehow, Daniel thinks, Cammie won't push back. Cammie will just _make those orders change_. Which means that if he stays on with SG-1, he may have the chance to do all of the things he's been wanting to do for years. All he'll need to do is convince Cammie that they need to be done, and Cammie will take care of convincing the people in charge of their urgency.

But Cammie's made it clear that consideration has a price. She's not (he thinks) asking for blind obedience from him. But she's also clearly done putting up with what _he_ views as perfectly healthy debate and Jack always used to call "that constant bitching thing you do, Daniel". He's going to have to decide whether or not he can actually place enough faith in her to believe, honestly _believe_ , that she understands his perspective and has thoroughly considered it when she makes her decisions, instead of taking time out when they're under the gun (and he's still appalled at himself for missing the fact that they _had been_ ) to listen to him remind her.

She's promised him that she will. Jack had (almost) always considered what Daniel said, but (mostly) never really understood. Never had the luxury of understanding, really, not while they were in the middle of a war. Jack had always been too busy trying to keep them all alive, trying to keep Earth safe, to have the time to stop and get into elaborate philosophical arguments with Daniel. Jack had always been working against the ticking of some invisible clock, against the pressures of being dragged in six different directions at once. 

Cammie isn't Jack, and the SGC has changed so much. Has he really been holding grudges over things she had nothing to do with? He's almost afraid -- confronted with the evidence of what she threw in his face -- that he has.

Daniel doesn't get much sleep that night, but it's nothing new, not really; it's been a long sleepless few weeks preparing for the negotiations that broke down so spectacularly, and it's going to (no doubt) be a long sleepless few weeks trying to salvage whatever they can. (He'd always enjoyed amusing himself by watching Jack splutter whenever he'd say _I'll sleep once I'm dead_.) Still, when his alarm goes off in the morning and he has to resist the temptation to shut it off and go back to sleep for a few years, he _does_ give into the temptation to hit the snooze alarm twice. 

It's grey and rainy outside, the kind of weather he knows from long experience will be snow in another week or two, and he's feeling a little bit grim about the prospect of another Colorado Springs winter. Maybe it _would_ be better to take the next trip to Atlantis after all. It's warm on Atlantis, and there'd be no Cameron Mitchell staring at him cool-eyed, demanding a level of trust that even Jack had never (dared to?) ask for. There'd been so many times when Jack hadn't listened to him, but even then, they'd always had the shouting matches later. He'd been expecting one of them when Cammie had invited him back into her office. Getting nothing more than a calm, unflinching assessment of their failings -- his failings, her failings -- had knocked him off-balance. 

She isn't asking him to shut up and blindly follow. She isn't asking him to be something he isn't. She's just telling him, without any room for argument, that for the gift of not arguing with him over the things that he feels are necessary, she expects him to return the gift of not arguing with her over the things that she feels are necessary. She's expecting him to trust her enough not to argue with her orders when those orders are important.

She's trusting him enough to know when those orders _are_ important.

It's a sudden reversal of thought, the mirror-image hitting him as clearly as her words had yesterday, and he stops in mid-sign-in as it hits him, then waves off the checkpoint security guard when he comes over to see if Dr. Jackson is all right and makes himself start moving again. Because suddenly it's all there, all laid out in front of him, clear as day if he'd just look at it in the right angle. Her lecture to him yesterday hadn't been born out of anger. Or even disappointment, really, though that's far closer. She'd been upset with him because she's been giving him the gift of her trust since moment one, really, and he'd told her, in deed if not in words, that trust wasn't reciprocated. He'd told her that he didn't believe in her anywhere near as much as she believes in him, and he's suddenly and shockingly _furious_ at himself when he realizes.

She's been trying so hard to make this work, to knit the four of them into a _team_ , to ease the way for him to do what needs to be done and shelter all of them from stupid decisions from on high, and he'd turned around and (in essence) called her an incompetent idiot. 

Which she isn't. Far from it, in fact. He's been constantly surprised by how quick her mind is, by how much _attention_ she pays, by how much she wants to learn about his speciality (and Sam's, and Teal'c's, and -- oh, everyone in the SGC). It isn't that he was expecting her to be stupid; Jack wasn't stupid (no matter how much he wanted everyone to think he was), and Jack wouldn't have chosen a stupid replacement. But she seems to take it on faith that it's her job to know a little bit about everything, and he (God help him) had thought it was _cute_ , watching her spar with Teal'c or try to master Goa'uld pronunciation. Like Landry thinks she's cute when she tries to talk him into what needs to be done, and the thought makes Daniel sick to his stomach, because -- how could he have underestimated her so badly? Even if she (apparently) wants everyone to? 

He's still sitting in front of his email going around and around in circles when the sound of someone clearing a throat comes from the door of his office, and he looks up to find Cammie standing there. Looking the same way she looks every morning when she comes to see if he's eaten yet, wide awake and completely cheerful, and there isn't a single hint of the lecture she'd delivered him yesterday on her face. "Let me guess," she says, her eyes crinkling up in a tolerant smile. "You drank half a pot of coffee and called it breakfast."

"Ah, mostly, yeah," Daniel says, wondering whether or not he should say anything about the tail-chasing he's been doing for the past twelve hours, deciding (finally) that if she doesn't want to bring it up, neither will he. "I didn't get much sleep, but I have those plans you asked for --"

She nods, once, her smile undimmed. "Thanks," she says. "Shoot it to me in email, I'll read it first thing and get working on Landry soon's I can. In the meantime, grab your mug and come on. They've got fresh muffins in the mess hall for breakfast today, an' you know I hate eating alone."

He has to wonder at her motives -- she drags him to breakfast a few times a week, true enough; she's apparently convinced that he doesn't eat enough to keep a bird alive. But this has the sense more that she's trying to tell him that she isn't holding a grudge, as they settle in at a table and she asks him about the script on some scrolls SG-4 brought back from P43-1RW earlier in the week. Something that doesn't have anything at all to do with SG-1's mission schedule for the week, but he'd mentioned it two days ago over lunch (the dialect is a fascinating variation on biblical Hebrew) and she'd apparently been listening. He shoves his thoughts out of the way, back into the back of his head where they can stew all by themselves, and launches into a semi-distracted lecture on verb tense vs. verb aspect and why it's so interesting that the verbs in _these_ scrolls apparently convey tense as well as aspect while biblical Hebrew doesn't. 

Cammie is listening, and even asking intelligent questions, and Daniel is just about ready to relax and believe that yesterday's contretemps has been forgotten -- or at least set aside for the time being -- when her eyes go distant and shuttered-over again. He skims quickly back over what he'd just said, looking for places where he might have put his foot in his mouth, when he realizes that she's listening to the conversation going on at a table two over, where two lieutenants have their heads together, ignoring the rest of the room, and are talking. "--impossible to put up with," one of them is saying, as Cammie's lips thin out and she pushes herself to her feet. "If I were her, I'd have reassigned them _both_ , and I don't _care_ if they're heroes --"

"Would you have, Lieutenant," Cammie says, all ice and dignity, and both lieutenants jerk straight up and stare at her. And no, Daniel doesn't need to ask what they'd been talking about. He's been hearing that kind of thing said about him for years. It's nothing new. SG-1 has always been a topic of gossip, well back to the very beginning, and if he didn't have a thick skin, he'd never have gotten this far. Sometimes it feels like Jack spent half his time defending his choice of team members to the other officers at the SGC. At least at first, anyway.

"Ma'am --" one of them, the one who hadn't been talking, says, and Cammie holds up one hand. Heads are turning all over the commissary, and conversations are grinding to a halt. Daniel wants to sink through the floor and disappear.

"A _good_ officer," Cammie says, her voice clear and carrying, but completely calm, "understands that each of her people are approaching a problem from all sorts of different angles, and a good officer will appreciate each and every one of those angles for what it has to teach her. A good officer recognizes that a group of people who never offer her a dissenting opinion are nothing but yes-men, and yes-men don't do anything but compound errors. A good officer recognizes that collecting alternate opinions is the basis of making intelligent decisions, and encourages healthy debate before those decisions have been made. We are operating under a very strange set of circumstances here, gentlemen, and the rest of the galaxy isn't going to fall into place just because you want it to. A good officer will recognize that having multiple perspectives available on her team will minimize the very real risk of getting _dead_ out there. And a good officer will encourage those perspectives, to see what she can learn from them."

Her voice, finally, sharpens. "And finally, good officers look around themselves before shooting off their mouths, to see who might be listening. Is that clear, Lieutenants?"

The one who'd been speaking when Cammie got up looks a little green around the edges, but he swallows hard and says, "Crystal, ma'am."

Cammie nods. "Report to my office after you've finished your breakfast, then, and we'll continue our little discussion about leadership in a more private setting." Her eyes flick around herself; suddenly everyone who's watching has found other things to do. 

She waits another second, until they've both nodded, and strides back over to take her seat across from Daniel again. He folds his hands into fists in his lap and tries to control his voice; he is _mortified_. "You don't need to defend me, you know," he says, and he can hear it coming out as more vicious than embarrassed. "People have been saying things like that about me for years."

Cammie looks up from her muffin and pins him with her eyes. Impossibly blue, Daniel thinks, and stops himself from thinking about how he's seen them cold as ice and warm as sunshine within the span of the same five minutes. "Wasn't," she says, briefly, her voice low enough that it won't carry to anyone who's (still) eavesdropping. "I was defending myself. And you are by God a member of my team, and I will _not_ stand for two snot-nosed young punks poking their noses in where they don't understand. Both of them are going to have to command people they don't understand someday. Faster if they stay here. And if they don't know how to, they're going to get people killed."

And, okay. He can understand that reasoning. It still leaves him shaking with indignation and shame, but he's honest enough to admit that it feels a little nice, too; almost like vindication, in some small fashion, her immediate and unstinting defense of him. Even Jack never fought that battle, not in the same way. Jack always made it clear that he kept Daniel on SG-1 because he wanted Daniel there, but Jack never quite placed it in the same context. With Jack, it was always _sure, he can be a pain in my ass sometimes, but he's smarter than you are and we need him and don't you forget it_ , and Daniel had always understood that as Jack's way of saying _I need you_ and never thought twice about it. 

_A member of my team_. He supposes he is. Until he says otherwise, at least. And it's ... almost a comfort, really, knowing that she's there to stand up for him no matter how much grief he's been giving her. A team. United. SG-1.

"I gotta head on down to my office before those two yammerheads finish breakfast," Cammie says, heaving a sigh, "so I can be ready to hand them their real smackdown. Not serious enough for me to turn them in or give them any kind of punishment detail, but I wanna make sure they know damn well that I won't stand for that kind of talk. I'll drop by your office in an hour or two after I've gotten a chance to go over your report. We can figure out what kind of approach we need to take then, a'ight?"

Out of everything that's happened in the last twenty-four hours or so, out of all the things she's said that have disturbed him or upset him or just plain _confused_ him, it's that simple careless 'we' that undoes him. It tells him in one simple syllable that she really _is_ on his side. Or wants him on hers, and Daniel's always thought those two things were entirely separate after years of manipulation and being manipulated, used and wielded like a weapon and bartered around like coin for bargaining, but with Cammie, he thinks, they're one and the same. He doesn't think he's ever met anyone with a more fascinating combination of artifice and artlessness, and here she is, sitting across from him, inviting him to help her put together a plan that works out for everyone. Relying on his help to put together a plan that works out for everyone. _Counting_ on him.

"All right," he says, and she nods once more and stands, picking up the other half of her muffin to take with her. She moves so gracefully. More gracefully now, after months of practice with Teal'c, and he thinks, suddenly, of the first time he saw her, pale and broken in a hospital bed, struggling to cling to life with both hands, too stubborn to die and stubborn enough to cast aside her injuries and walk again. Too stubborn to let any of this slip away from her. Too stubborn to let anything stand in her way.

Maybe she _can_ make it work.

"Cammie?" Daniel says, just as she's turning to walk away, seized by some impulse that he can't put a name to. She turns back, one eyebrow lifting in a note-perfect imitation of Teal'c, and he can feel himself flushing just a little, across the cheeks, but he doesn't let it stop him. "Ah. About yesterday. I _am_ sorry. And it won't happen again."

Her smile spreads across her face, clear and bright and happy, and her eyes are laughing. Not _at_ him, but inviting him to laugh with her, and he's a little surprised that he can see the difference. "Sure it will, baby," she says, and she calls him 'Dr. Jackson' when she's pissed at him and 'Daniel' when she's not, but, he thinks, she calls him 'baby' when he's done something to make her happy, and it's odd how much he likes hearing it. "But only a couple more times. We'll get the hang of it eventually. I got faith. We ain't been doing all that bad."

She's whistling as she walks off. Daniel watches her go, and thinks: she has faith. Maybe she can teach him how to have a little of his own.


End file.
